I write a weekly newsletter for a client that involves surfing technology news sites and then writing little “blurbs” about the latest happenings. In the process, I end up pasting a lot of quotations from articles on Web pages. The problem with pasting from the Web into Word is that you get all the formatting along with it. As I’ve written in the past, if you want to remove formatting, you have two options:
1. Highlight the offending text and press Ctrl+spacebar. This command removes all local formatting, so all you are left with is the formatting that is set up in the style.
2. Instead of doing a regular Paste, by pressing Ctrl+V, choose Paste Special. In the dialog box that opens, click Unformatted Text. Then only the text is pasted without any formatting.
I often use option 2, since I hate slowing down to fuss with formatting when I’m writing. It’s easier for me to edit if I’m not distracted by some hideous purple font or something. Getting at the Paste Special dialog box is slow, so I put a button on my toolbar for it.
Even a button is still slower than using Ctrl+V, however and that bugs me. There is no simple way to access the Paste Special/Unformatted command directly because you have to choose it as an option in the dialog box. In this case, nothing short of a macro would do (but don’t worry; it’s easy). To create it, follow these steps. (NOTE: if you’re using Word 2003, also see the note at the end of the article.)
1. Highlight some text in a document and press Ctrl+C to copy it. (You need to have text on the clipboard for the macro to work.)
2. Choose Tools|Macro|Record New Macro.
3. In the Macro Name box, enter a name for your macro like PasteUnformattedText. Click OK.
4. You see the tiny macro recording toolbar on your screen. It’s recording now, so you don’t want to make any extra moves.
5. Choose Edit|Paste Special and click the Unformatted Text radio button. Click OK to close the dialog box.
6. Now click the square Stop button on the Macro toolbar to make it stop recording.
With that, you have a macro! To try it out, choose Tools|Macro|Macros, select PasteUnformatedText from the list and click Run. Whatever you had on the clipboard is pasted in at your cursor location.
Now that you’ve proved it worked, adding a keyboard shortcut makes it just as fast as our old friend Ctrl+V. Choose Tools|Customize and click the Keyboard button. Under Categories, scroll down until you find Macros. Scroll down to find your PasteUnformattedText macro name on the right hand side. In the in the Press new shortcut key box, type a new key combination. I used Alt+V, because it’s similar to Ctrl+V.
Editor’s Note: Although this technique works in many versions of Word, due to a problem with the Word 2003 macro recorder, following the steps above may not record a macro that really pastes unformatted in Word 2003.
If it doesn’t work, you need to go into the macro itself by choosing Tools|Macros|Macros. Select the macro from the list and click Edit. You will see the code. In between the Sub and End Sub lines, replace the code that is there with this code:
Selection.PasteSpecial Link:=False, DataType:=wdPasteText, Placement:= _
wdInLine, DisplayAsIcon:=False
Then save and return to Microsoft Word.